Reading X-Rays In Asbestos Suits Enriched Doctor

By JONATHAN D. GLATER

Published: November 29, 2005

About a decade ago, a radiologist in this small town gradually stopped seeing patients and instead adopted what turned out to be a much more lucrative practice: reading X-rays full time.

The doctor, Ray A. Harron, now 73 years old, reviewed as many as 150 X-rays a day, or one every few minutes, and produced medical reports for $125 each. Some of his reports supported claims by more than 75,000 people seeking compensation for lung injury caused by inhalation of asbestos. For his work, he probably earned millions of dollars over the years.

Plaintiffs' lawyers who have used Dr. Harron's services recently did not return phone calls seeking comment. But in the eyes of defense lawyers fighting some of those claims, Dr. Harron was not a professional rendering an independent opinion, but a vital cog in a multibillion-dollar lawsuit machine. They contend that Dr. Harron's X-ray evaluations are unreliable at best, fraudulent at worst.

The defense lawyers are not the only ones who have questioned Dr. Harron's work. This summer, a federal judge found that Dr. Harron ''failed to write, read, or personally sign'' reports supporting 6,350 claims by people saying they had inhaled silica, another potentially dangerous material.

Congressional investigators are now looking into asbestos and silica litigation. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are also looking into asbestos claims, and while it is not clear whether they are looking at Dr. Harron's work, they have sought documents from a medical screening company that used his services and from others involved in asbestos and related litigation.

Dr. Harron has not been formally accused of wrongdoing. In depositions and court appearances he has not acknowledged any wrongdoing and has defended his work.

The spotlight on Dr. Harron's work comes at a time when critics of plaintiffs' lawyers have portrayed the sweeping product liability litigation over asbestos and silica as an effort to game a system set up to compensate injured workers. Defense lawyers have criticized expert witnesses and diagnosing doctors in the past for supporting lawsuits that the lawyers say lack merit.

While Dr. Harron rarely appeared in court, his medical reports were clearly crucial to tens of thousands of claims. Court documents in the asbestos and silica litigation show the critical role that can be played by doctors, who are less often maligned than the lawyers who hire them.

''This is the tip of the iceberg,'' said Walter G. Watkins Jr., a lawyer at Forman Perry Watkins Krutz & Tardy, a firm in Jackson, Miss., that has defended companies facing asbestos claims and silica claims. ''There are a lot of other Ray Harrons out there.''

Through a lawyer, Lawrence Goldman of New York, Dr. Harron declined to comment for this article.

Litigation involving asbestos, and more recently, silica, has grown into a huge business. Over the last 30 years, more than 700,000 claims have been filed involving inhalation of asbestos, a fire-retardant material that can cause a particularly pernicious form of lung cancer, and more than $70 billion has been spent on asbestos litigation -- $49 billion as compensation, according to the Rand Corporation.

Dr. Harron, corporate defense lawyers say, had some role in providing medical documents supporting thousands of claims against other companies that made or used asbestos.

As Dr. Harron stepped up his involvement in screening potential asbestos claimants, he began to travel and was around Bridgeport less and less, said Dr. Douglas McKinney, a urologist who said he had kept a practice in Bridgeport for nearly 20 years. ''He started doing this evaluation business and he was very seldom around,'' said Dr. McKinney, adding that he saw Dr. Harron only three or four times a year.

But Dr. McKinney said he was baffled when he learned from a newspaper article of challenges to some of Dr. Harron's work in asbestos and silica litigation. ''I was surprised at that, because he had always had a straightforward business here,'' Dr. McKinney said. ''I sent him a lot of my business for routine X-rays and ultrasounds and such.''

Dr. Harron is not an active member of the county medical association, according to the organization's executive secretary. A few local residents who said they knew him and tenants in the two, two-story blue-sided office buildings he owns, on a small plaza called Harron Square off the two-lane road that runs through town, said only that he was a nice man.

A 1999 court decision gives some idea of the nature of Dr. Harron's work. He was sued by the widow of Raymond Adams, whose lung cancer Dr. Harron had spotted on an X-ray. Dr. Harron, who had never met the man, drew the possible cancer to the attention of the law firm that had sent him the X-ray as part of its search for potential plaintiffs in asbestos lawsuits. The firm never passed on the information to Mr. Adams, according to court documents, and his cancer went undiagnosed for about a year. He eventually died.

The court found that Dr. Harron was not Mr. Adams's doctor and so did not have a duty to make sure he sought medical treatment.